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An anonymous reader writes "For those of you who still feel GNOME 2 is the best desktop environment, but don't want stick to old distros, MATE is a fork of GNOME 2, with all the names changed to avoid clashes with GNOME 3. Version 1.2 brings fixes, but also new features such as undo/redo in the file manager."
This release features better freedesktop standards integration, adds a few missing utilities, and merges new features into the file manager. The project has a new wiki; the roadmap has a few details on future goals, including porting things to Gtk 3 and using bits and pieces of modern GNOME 3 infrastructure where appropriate.

For my money, Gnome 2/MATE is still the best available desktop for Linux. I've tried the other approaches to taming Gnome 3 (Cinnamon, the classic 'fallback mode' panel, even Unity) and all currently seem lacking in comparison, with more limited features, or lower performance on resource-limited systems, or (in the case of Unity) annoying design choices. The benefits to developers of building a desktop on the Gnome 3 foundation (ease of maintenance, etc.) are all very well, but as an end-user, I'm going to go for the more responsive, fully-featured alternative. The situation may be different in a year or two, but right now MATE remains my top choice.

I never understood why when things were getting nice and stable both KDE and GNOME would suddenly shitcan all that work. i mean what was wrong with them? They both looked nice, ran fine, were low resource, so what was wrong with what they had? Could they just not live without an assload of bling like OSX and Windows has gotten?

BTW for those that prefer the KDE way of doing things Vector Linux [vectorlinux.com] has a "KDE Classic" edition based on 3.5.10 that is nice.

I never understood why when things were getting nice and stable both KDE and GNOME would suddenly shitcan all that work. i mean what was wrong with them? They both looked nice, ran fine, were low resource, so what was wrong with what they had? Could they just not live without an assload of bling like OSX and Windows has gotten?

That is soooooo true. Imagine if all the resources would have been put to polishing KDE3 and GNOME2 instead. We might not have the latest whizbang innovation UI, but a good solid, basic desktop. That's exactly what Linux needs, not another broken mess. And those two both have Compiz support so you get some eye-candy spices too.

BTW for those that prefer the KDE way of doing things Vector Linux [vectorlinux.com] has a "KDE Classic" edition based on 3.5.10 that is nice.

And there's, of course, the Trinity Desktop [trinitydesktop.org], which is a similar project to MATE, but it bases on KDE3.

This approach is doomed to failure. The better approach is Mint's Cinnamon project. There they maintain a gnome2 like desktop environment, but it rests on gnome3. There are ppa's (https://launchpad.net/~merlwiz79/+archive/cinnamon-ppa) that let you install it into official Ubuntu distros, so no need to install a full-on mint distro. It would be even better if canonical moved these packages into universe or something.

I agree keeping it GTK2 is terrible, but the summary says "...future goals, including porting things to Gtk 3..." Of course at that point, why have both Mint and MATE when they're both GTK2 UI built on GTK3?

The real question is how long can the limited Mint development team support both MATE and Cinnamon? One would think that eventually, one is going to have to go and since Gnome 2 had a ton of programmers, it doesn't seem possible that MATE is going to be sustainable in the long run.

MATE is independent of Mint and has its own team (Clem is a member, but Mint ddidn't start and doesn't run the project). The MATE team is small, but their goals are much more modest than Gnome's - they (thankfully!) have no ambitions to design a new 'desktop paradigm'.

MATE is independent of Mint and has its own team (Clem is a member, but Mint ddidn't start and doesn't run the project). The MATE team is small, but their goals are much more modest than Gnome's - they (thankfully!) have no ambitions to design a new 'desktop paradigm'.

I stand (or type) correct. That said, one of the issues with prompting the shift to Gnome 3 was that the code base for Gnome 2 was unwieldy. Hopefully, they will be able to maintain it. My real concern would be with the other gnome applications (evolution, brassero, etc.). Will these all be forked or will the G3 versions be used and if the G3 versions are used, trying to integrate them into G2 may be a monumental task.

That said, one of the issues with prompting the shift to Gnome 3 was that the code base for Gnome 2 was unwieldy. Hopefully, they will be able to maintain it.

It was that GTK+ 2.x code was becoming unwieldly and so GTK+ 3.x started a big cleanup. That principle may have also applied to some other individual packages. But the desktop as a whole wasn't really in that position.

they wont though because thou shalt not have a traditional desktop, you most have unity because unity is the way of the future and it is the perfect form factor for in Linux in all environments be it desktop phone tablet or tv all must be one and don't you dare ask to put it on the right side it must be on the left.

Generally, a "reference" in this context is synonmous with "allusion"--hence, my comment. But yes, you are in fact—pedantically—correct about "reference" in a more general sense. Good job; you've corrected someone on the internet.

This approach is doomed to failure. The better approach is Mint's Cinnamon project. There they maintain a gnome2 like desktop environment, but it rests on gnome3. There are ppa's (https://launchpad.net/~merlwiz79/+archive/cinnamon-ppa) that let you install it into official Ubuntu distros, so no need to install a full-on mint distro. It would be even better if canonical moved these packages into universe or something.

You are missing the point! I don't want Gnome3 and I don't want a Gnome2-looking interface stuck on Gnome3. It wasn't the look of Gnome2 that I liked. It was the flexibility and feature completeness. I could drag app links to the bar on top. I could use the bar on bottom as my taskbar. I could put a "widget" on my top bar that showed me my process or usage, RAM usage, network activity, swap activity, CPU temperature, fan speed, CPU speed, case temp, etc, etc, etc, all without adding any special repos. I can't do any of that on Gnome3. Not because Gnome3 doesn't LOOK like Gnome2, but because it's Gnome3.

I don't want Gnome3, period! I run XFCE and KDE now, thank you very much.

I'm too lazy to hunt through the gnome website but how hard is it to migrate from GTK+2 to 3?

Most libraries preserve some backward compatibility, whereby between versions you can just drop in the new libraries and re-compile. The new bells and whistles won't show up but it'll still work with the new libraries, even if the features are deprecated.

The real problem they have is the same one that Trintity, the fork of KDE 3 has.

Take any program that ported over from KDE 3 to KDE 4 like Amarok. Amarok is not a core KDE program. They have a small team and they are firmly committed to KDE 4. Yet they will get emails from Trinity users that want support. The Amarok developers are not working on anything KDE 3 related, Amarok 1.4 is the last of the old series. They only want support requests for Amarok 2.0 and above. Projects like K3b, K9copy and Amarok ar

It doesn't look similar how? It is similar, it's same code, just ported. Which functions are different? Applets? They slowly returns and everyone can write new ones using Gobject Introspection (that's how all GNOME Shell "Nostalgia" hacks came about). And in the end, it's just code, tweak it more closer to GNOME 2 behavior (no matter how useless I think would be).

It more and more looks like emotional posturing and less real complains about GNOME Shell.

I love mInt for desktop and I love Debian for servers, but I've found that since mint team uses unstable for basing their Mint-Debian it's too hard to keep up with broken things and updates that break things.

Now we have MATE from GNOME v2 as a form of dissatisfaction of v3.We already had Trinity [trinitydesktop.org] forked from KDE v3.5.Then there's Razor-Qt [razor-qt.org] as "something almost completely new".And the pletora of "alternative" desktops we all love: XFCE, LXDE, etc.etc. [wikipedia.org]Is it actually a problem of fragmentation, or is it that some projects after a few years (and some amounts of donated money) just go into technology decline?I personally tend towards the second option.

Is it actually a problem of fragmentation, or is it that some projects after a few years (and some amounts of donated money) just go into technology decline?

Apple wanted a web browser without depending on Microsoft, so they had to decide between reaching an agreement with Opera, or embrace Mozilla, or use the KHTML engine from KDE. They chose the latter, and forked it because they had to change too much (I guess). Then Google, even though is the main supporter of Mozilla, decides to create yet another brows

They go into a fanboid mode where there are a bunch of incestuous sycophants that pander to the developers egos in a manner that swamps any rational input. This is similar to how religious cults go so far awry.

You sound all rational but how do you address the irrational nature of gnome3 with rational thought? You don't, you get out of it. In this case it won't cost you your life.

Maybe I'm some sort of edge case who just happens to have the same preferences as the developers, but I like Gnome Shell. It's minimalistic, it's fast, it does things exactly like I want them. With the theming plugin it even looks less gauche; personally I prefer a uniform dark grey on black as far as UI widgets go. I've used most every window manager and desktop environment under the sun, so it's not like I'm talking out of my ass here.

Protip: you can set a "spawn terminal" keyboard shortcut under the key

The extensions are implemented in JavaScript. You can get a debug console by typing "lg" in the alt+f2 run prompt. The extensions already in the repo includes ones that revert the UI to be more like Gnome 2, as well as at least one system monitor plugin of the type people seem to be pining for. I haven't tried hacking around with this and I don't know how good the API documentation is but people do seem to

People who value trivial choices are the idiots. I'm reminded of Steve Jobs, and his decision to fill his wardrobe with identical blue jeans and black turtlenecks as a way to eliminate such from his head space.

Steve Jobs probably liked blue jeans and black turtlenecks, and made that choice out of thousands of options. He did not go out to make it the only option for everyone. See that essential difference? In fact, it's pretty much similar to those who want to stick with MATE instead of choosing between following Gnome's antics or switching to another desktop.

So yeah, using MATE fragments Linux like black turtlenecks fragment fashion, and it takes away annoying and trivial choices like wearing the same takes away choices. What were you trying to say again?

Steve Jobs probably liked blue jeans and black turtlenecks, and made that choice out of thousands of options. He did not go out to make it the only option for everyone. See that essential difference? In fact, it's pretty much similar to those who want to stick with MATE instead of choosing between following Gnome's antics or switching to another desktop.

So yeah, using MATE fragments Linux like black turtlenecks fragment fashion, and it takes away annoying and trivial choices like wearing the same takes away choices. What were you trying to say again?

To you, it's an essential difference. To Steve, whos head was full of larger concerns for world domination, it probably wasn't. If he had a wardrobe full of black work pants and blue zip up sweaters, it probably wouldn't have made much difference to him. It would have been beneath him to dwell on such trivialities.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Steve would have walked through a fire to get jeans. I doubt it.

I do know it's beneath me to dwell on such things. Being confronted with trivial choices stresses me o

If you think more choice is always better than less, then you've obviously never looked at it from the perspective of a developer. Fragmentation is exactly the reason I hope I never have to develop desktop software for Linux. Why would you wish such hell on developers for your platform?

Look. The fact is, the whole point is free as in freedom (as well as free as in beer). The public has cried long and loud about the direction GNOME3 has taken. People respond with "don't like it? don't use it!" Well, when someone actually takes them up on it, someone else calls it "fragmentation." Can't win?

Fact is, GNOME is not listening to its users. It's a problem. We know what happened when XFree86 didn't listen... we've gone to X.org and flourished because of it. Now we have people bringing life back to the Gnome2 DE and I expect a lot of user interest will follow... my own as well. (As soon as I find out how easy it is to install and run it under the latest Fedora... right now, I am on CentOS 6.x because Fedora has failed me...) Maybe I can go back with MATE 1.2... CentOS is good but takes a lot of effort to tweak it the way I want it... moreso than Fedora of whatever version CentOS most resembles.

Full disclosure: I manage the project I am about to propose your use of.
CentOS and its upstream RHEL6 is great on the desktop and I too feel that going from Fedora to RHEL there are just way too many things I miss. I also hated everything Gnome was doing with gnome-shell and gtk3. So I made a fork of RHEL6 that had everything I needed (an OpenVZ compatible kernel), dahdi packages via rpm, proprietary Nvidia packages and something that offered the functionality of EPEL/RPMForge/ELRepo/rpmfusion without t

Are you forgetting about Cinnamon? It's basically the same thing but starting from gnome3 and working back to gnome2's appearance. As opposed to mate's starting with gnome2's code base, and working towards gnome3's while keeping the apperance the same.

Are you forgetting about Cinnamon? It's basically the same thing but starting from gnome3 and working back to gnome2's appearance.

It's not the appearance that's an issue, but the functionality.

Like working support for multiple buttoned mice, multiple displays and display orders, overlapping windows with focus-follows-mouse and user controlled Z order, multiple sessions of the same programs whether or not the apps themselves provide an "open new instance" functionality, remote X logins, adjustable DPI (for wysiwyg DTP this is a must)...

Most people seem to complain about panel apps, but to me, that's a minor thing compared to how basic functionality has been sacrificed. The fallback mode is nothing like Gnome 2, and changing the looks to get it more like Gnome 2 will accomplish diddley squat.

The first Gnome 3 dev who has guts enough to say "dudes, we fscked up this one, bad" will get my respect.

The first Gnome 3 dev who has guts enough to say "dudes, we fscked up this one, bad" will get my respect.

He would be a hero. A voice of reason. A voice of intelligence. A voice of sanity.

The sad thing is, he would be shunned and likely ejected. The Gnome usability experts have all, already told the Gnome 3 developers they are fucking up very badly. The gnome 3 developers told them they didn't have the intelligence to understand their visionary thinking. In other words, according to the gnome 3 developers, if you disagree with the gnome 3 developers, you are an idiot. This is not hyperbole. This is straight from the mailing list. Its disgusting.

At this point in time, either you've drank the koolaid and have long since turned off your brain, growing like a mushroom, or left gnome 3 development. Otherwise, according to the gnome 3 developers, you're an idiot and not likely unqualified to contribute to the project.

It isn't going to happy because it already happen, in mass, and the gnome 3 developers labeled them idiots.

I went to the Citroen garage to pick up my roof rack the other day, and do you know what? They had *five* different models of van. Five! Talk about fragmenting the market! Obviously everyone should all just use a Relay dually, because fragmentation is bad.

It gets worse though, because on the way out of there shocked by the fragmentation of five different models, I drove past the Peugeot garage - and *they* had five different models too! Then I drove past the Ford Commercials garage and my Transit-identifying neurons melted.

Let me explain the entrenchment metaphor as I understand it: Prior to Windows 9x, MS-DOS was "the operating system you get with a name brand PC" and "the operating system with which all applications and peripherals are expected to be compatible". Windows has since taken that role.

This is EXACTLY why Windows reigns supreme over all the 2^42 versions of Linux. You know exactly what you are getting into.

Yes. You can choose:

XP HomeXP ProXP 64Couple of other varieties of XPVarious server versions of WindowsSix or so varieties of VistaA dozen or so varieties of Windows 7, 32-bit or 64-bitAnd soon, Windows for Tablets on the Desktop

People complaining about Linux 'fragementation' and then using that as an argument for running Windows are highly amusing. I can't even remember all the different versions of Windows you can run with different features and radically different UIs.

you are talking out of your ass.
in the windows world, you need help you get Habib in south asia reading to you from a script. you get apps that won't run in win 7 enterprise but are fine in other version of windows 7. you get apps that can't run on 64 bit. you get apps that security patches break. and yes you still get the blue screen of death.

As long as all of the actual applications are using the same underlying libraries, there really is no "fragmentation". These idiots whining about fragmentation are just clueless and superficial. What shell you happen to use is not the sorts of problems that "fragmentation" are supposed to represent.

Besides, if anything is going to cause "fragmentation" it's the new stuff that no one really wants rather than the old stuff that most people are content to keep on using (including Windows users).

I hate when I have the ability to replace something I hate with something I love.

I see your sarcasm. The problem comes when the new hotness draws resources away from keeping one's favorite desktop environment patched with security updates and compatibility with new applications and hardware support frameworks.

The problem comes when the new hotness draws resources away from keeping one's favorite desktop environment patched with security updates and compatibility with new applications and hardware support frameworks.

And your solution to this is what? Require all software developers to maintain free software forever? These developers are leaving ${your favorite project} anyway, there's no point in complaining that they started a new one to replace it.

Nothing wrong here. If a Mac user doesn't like the way Mac OS X is going, they're choices are to use old and unsupported software or bitch and complain. If a Linux user doesn't like the way things are going they can fork.

Nothing wrong here. If a Mac user doesn't like the way Mac OS X is going, they're choices are to use old and unsupported software or bitch and complain. If a Linux user doesn't like the way things are going they can fork.

I think you are confusing users with developers and that is part of the problem with linux in general. An end "user" cannot fork a damn thing because they don't know how to program.

If a developer on OS X does not like something, they can write their own extensions/plugins or applications that publish a "service" that can be used in other programs via the services menu in any cocoa application. You can replace the "finder" with a third party replacement like Pathfinder or write one yourself and license it ho

I'm not a developer either. But I'm glad that those who have coding skills can fork software. If a piece of software no longer does what I want it to, I just drop it and go on to the next piece of software.

Well, I haven't actually tried it, but Gnome3 won't run on my system. So I'm rather glad that Mate is producing something that will be usable when Debian stable incorporates Gnome3.

(And the Gnome3 fallback to Gnome2 fallback mode is so eyetearingly ugly that I installed the stable branch, replacing the testing branch, to get away from it. Of course, what I'd really prefer is KDE3, but pearson seems to be rather slow in making that usable [under the name trinity], so I may end up with Mate. Or possibly LXDE or some such. I tried it for awhile, and it's usable, but I much prefer Gnome2.)

Why not improve the gnome classic desktop from gnome 3 instead? This zombie-gnome2 effort seems like a waste of time to me.

Can you put a weather widget on the top bar on Gnome3 Classic? How about a CPU temp sensor? How about a graph that shows CPU, RAM, swap, and network usage? Maybe a sensor that shows the CPU speed for each core with the ability to change them to ondemand or performace? Can you put the taskbar on bottom bar? Can you put just a gnome foot (start button) on the bottom left like Windows and the full menu on top (Gnome-foot, Places, System)?

The last time I tried Gnome3, none of these things were possible. These were not an option on Gnome3 Classic either. I want my old Gnome2 back, not the "look" of Gnome2 stuck on top of Gnome3. I don't want "New Coke" in an "Old Coke" can.

Why not improve the gnome classic desktop from gnome 3 instead? This zombie-gnome2 effort seems like a waste of time to me.

Can you put a weather widget on the top bar on Gnome3 Classic? How about a CPU temp sensor? How about a graph that shows CPU, RAM, swap, and network usage? Maybe a sensor that shows the CPU speed for each core with the ability to change them to ondemand or performace? Can you put the taskbar on bottom bar? Can you put just a gnome foot (start button) on the bottom left like Windows and the full menu on top (Gnome-foot, Places, System)?

The last time I tried Gnome3, none of these things were possible. These were not an option on Gnome3 Classic either. I want my old Gnome2 back, not the "look" of Gnome2 stuck on top of Gnome3. I don't want "New Coke" in an "Old Coke" can.

You can do all those things in gnome fallback (though you need to hold alt when right clicking on the panel). The same applets are available: http://omgubuntu.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gnome-fallback.jpg [amazonaws.com]
Besides you seem to be missing my point. I never said that gnome classic is great. But if you want to maintain a traditional desktop it would be better to start with gnome classic rather than taking on the huge job of modernizing gnome 2 since most of the effort has already been done.

Modernizing GNOME2, yeah, that'll be a massive job man, what with it being so ancient and all, I mean the devs stopped working on it way back in 2010.

Gnome 2 was created some 10 years ago and while it has been improved and updated it still carries a lot of cruft.

Seriously, sure it should be updated to GTK3 at some point, but the GTK2 libs will still work until get around to it. So they can either take the GNOME2 codebase and update it in a piecemeal fashion as their resources allow, or they can completely reimplement all the GNOME2 features on top of GNOME classic which should only take them a few years. Now which is the best option for someone who wants something GNOME2-like now.

As I said, most of that work has already been done. Gnome classic is a port of the gnome 2 desktop, not a reimplementation.

Why not improve the gnome classic desktop from gnome 3 instead? This zombie-gnome2 effort seems like a waste of time to me.

Can you put a weather widget on the top bar on Gnome3 Classic? How about a CPU temp sensor? How about a graph that shows CPU, RAM, swap, and network usage? Maybe a sensor that shows the CPU speed for each core with the ability to change them to ondemand or performace? Can you put the taskbar on bottom bar? Can you put just a gnome foot (start button) on the bottom left like Windows and the full menu on top (Gnome-foot, Places, System)?

The last time I tried Gnome3, none of these things were possible. These were not an option on Gnome3 Classic either. I want my old Gnome2 back, not the "look" of Gnome2 stuck on top of Gnome3. I don't want "New Coke" in an "Old Coke" can.

All but the cpufreq applet part is possible with Gnome Shell Extensions and I am pretty sure there is actually an extension out there for cpufreq that I just haven't found useful yet. Now I am generally in flavor of a lightweight base and add feature via plug-in approach...Only if Gnome3's base was actually lightweight.

A small group of developers starting on a fresh (to them) project, which is often the most productive time, have shown that they can add a couple minor features, fix a few bugs, and do some renaming. You can always do something. The question is how effective you are. How much would they have accomplished if it was a nice clean codebase?

Plus, this is free software we're talking about here. Working on messy code is something we do for money, but even when it's fulfilling, make no mistake, working on messy cod